Bees

Bee on my privet

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

A little bit of honey

I purchased my bees a few months ago, just as everything around here was starting to flower. As I mentioned I purchased a couple of nuc packages. The great thing about them is that the hive is already established and has brood and egg laying, the whole nine yards. It is just in a smaller hive. Fortunately, the time I installed my nucs into their normal hives coincided with normal growth for a colony. One of my colonies is doing great and I am about to add another deep super to it. The other is doing better and I will check on it this weekend.
I have been watching the strong hive. It has been storing a lot of honey. Most of the honey is either mixed with brood or pollen or both. However, in the top box, the outside frames looked like all honey. When I went in there last weekend, I found they had capped one side of the frame. When they have caped the comb, it means the honey is ready. Oddly the other side of the comb was not even drawn out. Feeling a bit guilty, I took the frame of honey home.

Isn't it pretty?

Unfortunately, this is a plastic foundation. So I had to scrape the comb off and crush it up a bit and let it drain overnight. To do this I took a battering bowl I have that has a rack for whatever you are battering that sits above the batter. I laid a cheese cloth on the rack then put the crushed comb on top of it. I let it filter overnight and the squeezed the remaining honey out the next day.

I managed to get about 15oz of honey from that half frame. I am pretty sure they have more now. I might add another box and pull some more in a few weeks if the weather holds up.